


Bound To You

by under_my_blue_umbrella



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Action, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, traces of humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18679042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/under_my_blue_umbrella/pseuds/under_my_blue_umbrella
Summary: Cormoran and Robin are in a bit of a pinch. Things heat up. It's not what you think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @LulaIsAKitten for Brit-picking this story and combing it for language mistakes. You DO know your stuff!
> 
> This ficlet? I dunno. It just sort of... happened.

“Cormoran?”

Robin feels his head stir on her shoulder, and there is the smallest movement in the heavy chest slumped against hers. 

“Cormoran, come on, wake up. I can’t-- You’re heavy, and you need to… Cormoran!”

His hair tickles her cheek as he rolls his head a little, his chin digging into her shoulder and coming to rest against the side of her neck. His breath puffs against her skin there, laboured, like someone rising from deep sleep.

“Really, Cormoran,” she pleads. “You- I need you to wake up. _Please_.” Grunting, she tries to shift her large partner a little more towards her, a little more upright to ease the strain on the metal handcuffs around her wrists, fastened behind his broad back. Cormoran is a rag doll in their enforced embrace, his shackled hands limp behind _her_ back, his heavy arms threaded over and under hers. Their legs have been tied with cable ties likewise, circled around each other, and her left one has gone numb, pressed to the floor by Strike’s heavy prosthetic. 

Robin wonders what they’ve injected them with. There’s an itching spot on her neck where she knows the needle went in. Whatever it was, her body has either processed the drug quicker than Strike, or they’ve given him a much higher dose. He’s big and can handle a lot, but she hopes they haven’t overdosed him. Or is it a concussion? He took a fist to his face, after all.

With effort, she hitches her shoulder, the one Cormoran is currently drooling on, his breath - smoke and mint and the copper smell of a split lip - tickling her neck. 

“Cormoran, _seriously_ ,” she moans, her back threatening to spasm under his weight. “Can you. Please. Wake. UP!“ She bellows the last word into his ear, and that does it.

With a bit of a start, Strike’s head lifts from its resting place, his torso straightens, and his stubbly cheek grazes hers as he sits up, green eyes blinking in utter confusion.

“Th’ fuck?” 

Instinctively, he tries to move backwards, out of her space. Robin gives a small shout of pain as her arms are stretched to their limits behind him and the handcuffs cut into her wrists. 

“Ugh- don’t move! Stay still! They’ve cuffed us to each other. You’re hurting me! Sorry. Don’t tug.”

“What the bloody…”

Strike shuffles back against her, his head turning this way and that, more alert now. While the strain on her arms lessens, she feels his hands moving behind her back, testing his restraints. His legs, entangled with hers, each of them practically sitting in the other one’s lap, wriggle tentatively.

“Argh, careful,” she admonishes him again. “You can’t- _we_ can’t move all that much. Mad Hatter’s done a bloody good job immobilizing us. Can you move your leg a bit? Your... the socket... It’s really digging into my thigh.”

Flexing his knee, Strike lifts his right leg off Robin’s left one.

“What the fuck happened?” He shakes his head like a dog shedding water off its fur. Still a bit dazed, he glances around the cellar they’re stuck in, taking in the ramshackle storage cabinets, creaking with age, the rusty boiler and the old washing machine missing its door. 

Robin exhales, gratefully rolling her foot to ease the stiffness. “You don’t remember?”

“Not… clearly,” Strike answers. Their faces are side by side now, cheek to cheek. From the corner of her eye, she sees Strike’s lashes flutter. “I only remember- Mad Hatter. We searched his flat. They’d made us. _Stupid_. They were waiting. But then…” He pauses, blinking again. “No. I don’t remember.”

“They had syringes,” Robin fills in the blanks. “Surprised us. There were three of his men. We tried to fight them off. You knocked one of them out, but the other one got a good punch in before they injected you. How’s your lip?”

She sees him exploring the bloody split with his tongue. “‘S alright,” he says perfunctorily. “It’s nothing.” And then, still scanning the cellar, he adds, ”This isn’t his house. It’s too old. Any idea where we might be? Has anyone been here while I was out?”

Robin shakes her head. “No, and I’ve been awake for a while. No one’s been here. I haven’t heard any noises from upstairs. The place feels deserted.”

She fidgets nervously. It’s odd being this close to Strike. Ever since their accidental kiss in the hospital car park, they’ve both been diligently staying out of each other’s personal space, avoided touching as if it were a danger zone. And yet, the sensation of him so near rushes back like muscle memory. There’s familiarity and comfort in the way she can feel his deep voice rumbling in his chest against her breastbone when he speaks. 

“We need to get out of here,” Strike tears her from her thoughts.

“What do you think he wants with us?” Robin asks, frightened.

Strike shakes his head, his thick hair a soft brush over her cheekbone. “I don’t know. He knows we found the evidence. He can’t let us go now, but he’s not a killer. He’s a coward. Whatever it is he’s planning on doing with us - I’m not gonna wait around to find out.”

For all his urgency, his voice sounds calm enough, and Robin is amazed how safe she feels, all of a sudden, simply because he’s here and with her, no longer unconscious in her arms. This is Cormoran, wide awake, and she’s sure he has a plan.

“But how-,” she starts. “What do you want to do?”

“Get these cuffs off,” he replies, determined.

“But… _how_?” she hears herself ask, again.

“Move a little closer,” he instructs. “I need to get my arm over your head.”

They both shuffle and lean in, and Robin is suddenly acutely aware of her breasts pressing against Cormoran’s chest, of the warmth of his lap through her skinny jeans. They’ve taken his coat and jacket, leaving him in his dark blue shirt, and she sees sweat glistening on the patch of skin exposed by his unbuttoned collar. She can smell it on him, too, the light salty tang mixing with his deodorant as he guides his arm over her head, twisting his upper body sideways with a grunt. When he has manoeuvered both hands to his right side, still caught around her forearm, Robin now pressed against his shoulder and the side of his ribcage, he gives a strained huff. “So far, so good. You okay, Robin?”

“‘M fine,” she grits into his shirt. Normally, she doesn’t mind her partner’s impressive height and weight (on the contrary, she likes him that way, so different from slender and bony Matthew), but right now she wishes he had stuck to his vegetarian bacon diet. Her arms simply aren’t long enough to accommodate his enormous bulk AND leave any wiggle room. “Could you...uh… tell me what you’re doing?”

“Gotta get to my leg.” She feels his triceps stretch as he reaches for the hem of his right trouser leg and rolls it up, revealing his prosthetic.

“Why?” she squeezes out. This close against him, enveloped by his scent of tobacco, sweat and the subtle, peppery-sweet aftershave he uses, she’s becoming slightly breathless, and it’s not simply due to her uncomfortable position. _It must be the drugs_ , she marvels, _they’re still in my system._

“Hang in there,” Cormoran says, peeling something off the side of the fibreglass socket of his fake leg. “I just hope it didn’t- no, still there.” Triumphantly, he’s holding something small up, something that glints in the sparse light shed by a single naked bulb.

Robin strains her neck to see. “Is that.. a safety pin?”

“Yup.” He grins.

“Why do you keep a safety pin taped to your prosthetic?” She’s incredulous.

“Because,” he explains, already bending the pin into picklock shape, “whenever I bugger my knee, when I can’t wear the prosthetic and have to pin my trouser leg up, I can _never_ remember where I put the bloody safety pins. So last time - remember, when I pulled my hamstring - I duct-taped one to my socket afterwards.”

“You’re unbelievable.” Robin means it.

Strike smirks and, surprisingly nimbly, continues to manipulate the lock of the cuff fastened around his left wrist. A metallic click, a snap, and then the cuff falls away.

“Uh,” Cormoran exhales, untangles his arms from hers and turns his twisted upper body back to Robin with relief. She’s still squished against him, against his chest, but it’s infinitely more comfortable, and he doesn’t need much room to free his other wrist as well. In fact, she realizes, he’s doing it blind, his face only centimetres from hers, lips parted in concentration, gaze turned inward as all of his attention is directed towards guiding his hands. His breath ghosts over her skin and she can see the smatter of freckles all over his face and the chestnut tips of his otherwise dark lashes.

“Got it,” he announces. “Your turn. Bring your arms up and over. Put your hands in my lap.”

Robin does as told, wincing a bit as she lifts her sore arms and pulls them over Strike’s head, around to the front. A strange feeling of regret floods her at the loss of their involuntary embrace.

Strike makes quick work of unshackling her, his hands quickly and gently turning her wrists to check for chafe marks when he’s done. He releases them with a soft brush of his thumbs over the angry red skin.

“You good?” Green eyes catch hers, glittering ominously in the semi-dark of the basement.

“Yeah.” Robin takes a steadying breath. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Now the legs.”

“But how are you… We don’t have a knife. Or anything to cut with.”

“We don’t need one. Or, not for me to get loose, anyway.” He’s smirking, once more reaching for his artificial leg. 

With a few practiced moves, he detaches the prosthesis and then, freed, scoots away from Robin’s lap, dragging his left leg plus the dangling prosthesis out from underneath Robin’s thigh. 

“Call me Harry Houdini,” he says, hands spread in a _tada!_ gesture and smiling crookedly.

Grinning, Robin brings her legs together, a painful movement after having them spread wide for so long. She pulls them up and pushes herself off the floor, balancing with her arms in order not to fall. The cable ties bite into her ankles. “Let’s find something sharp,” she says. “There’s got to be something here. You try the lower cabinets, I’ll search the upper ones.”

Strike nods, looking pleased with her thinking. He can’t hop with this prosthesis dangling from his other ankle, and he also wouldn’t be able to with it reattached. But he can push himself across the floor to the cabinets behind him and make himself useful while Robin hops and shuffles across the room, opening cabinets and rifling through drawers. There’s not much in them, Strike pulling out a few cans of paint and brushes, Robin coming across a bicycle pump and a tin of rusty screws. Disappointment rises in her when her hands touch a familiar metallic shape on a shelf above her.

“Hah!” She pulls out a pair of shears.

“That’ll do.” Strike smiles up at her. “You first.”

The shears are rusty and a little too big, but Robin manages to work her way through the plastic encircling her ankles. Strike is next. Robin is cutting and sawing at his bindings when she sees him tilt his head and sniff the air.

“Do you smell that?” A frown wrinkles his forehead.

“What?”

“Smoke…” 

They both whip their heads around, in direction of the basement door atop a short flight of stairs. At first, Robin doesn’t see anything. But then, grey, cloudy tendrils drift through the thin gap at the bottom of the door. 

They stare at each other. Strike’s eyes are wide and intense.

“Hurry up,” he urges. “We have to get out of here!”

Fear surging through her, Robin desperately saws at the plastic until it splits with a sharp snap. Strike grabs his artificial leg and hurriedly pushes his stump into the socket. Robin helps him up when he’s done and sees him take an unsteady step, regaining his equilibrium. Quicker on her feet, she rushes past him and is already on the top step, palms against the thick metal door, when Strike catches up.

“It’s warm,” she announces glumly.

Strike swears. “Shit!”

“They set the house on fire?“ Panic rises in Robin.

“I’m afraid so.” His eyes run over her, and she thinks she sees regret in them.

“You said Mad Hatter wouldn’t kill us.” 

“He’s not.” Strike’s face turns grim. “He’s letting the fire take care of that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little story got completely away from me. The premise was to have Cormoran and Robin tied up together somehow, becoming _very_ aware of their physical closeness. Maybe things would heat up. And then they did, but in a completely different way than I had intended.  
> And, please, just ignore the "case" that's led to this situation. I know I did, and who cares about Mad Hatter and the hows and whys. I just needed a reason for our two sweethearts to be tied up in a cellar.  
> And yes, the story title is a cross-reference to something Milady said to Athos in The Musketeers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing action. Why did I make myself write action AGAIN?!

“What do we do?” Robin’s eyes are wide as she looks at him, and he sees fear, but not panic. “Hope someone’s noticed the fire and wait for help to arrive?”

While she’s talking, she pulls off her jumper, leaving her in just a thin blouse, and stuffs it against the slit under the door to block the smoke that is wafting in. Strike helps with the tip of his foot, his brain in overdrive. What seemed like a pinch a minute earlier, something he could get them out of with a few of his detective tricks, has suddenly turned very serious. He’s underestimated Mad Hatter, and now he’s put them, put _Robin_ in grave danger.

“I’m not sure we can rely on that,” he tells her. “We have no idea where we are. This building looks old. They could’ve taken us outside of town, somewhere remote while we were out. I just don’t think even Mad Hatter’s stupid enough to try and burn us down with a house when he knows there’s next-door neighbours and a fire station close by.”

“Then what?” Robin asks, her palms flat against the door again. “Crack the lock, make a run for it and hope we can find our way through a burning house we don’t know?”

He winces at the truth in her words. “That’s option number two, yes.”

Robin looks fierce now and a little wild, her red-gold hair electrified by the jumper she pulled over her head, and Cormoran is baffled by the sudden blueness of her eyes. _It must be an after-effect of the drugs_ , he thinks, quickly looking away.

“Let’s see if I can even open this before we decide. Doors are more difficult than handcuffs.” He fishes the safety pin from his pocket and forces his nervous hands to still. It’s an old door requiring a large key - not necessarily easier to pick than the new ones, and he has to be careful not to break the pin.

“Gently,” Robin admonishes him, and the fact that she’s standing close to him, her faint rose perfume mingling with the intensifying smell of burning wood isn’t making things easier.

“I know.” 

It takes too long. He can feel the pin latch on to the turning mechanism, and he’s almost got it moving twice, but the damn thing slips, and once he even drops the pin and they both scramble to pick it up. 

“Steady, Cormoran. Breathe. You can do this.” Robin’s hand lands on his back. He can feel each of her delicate fingers through the cotton fabric, her small palm. The shape of trust.

He inhales and tries again. Third time’s the charm. With an audible click, the cylinder slides back.

“Okay,” Cormoran says, releasing the breath he’s held. “We need to make a decision. I can’t hear any sirens approaching. Can you?”

Straining her ears, Robin shakes her head. It’s the pale blue blouse that brings out her eyes, Strike thinks. Or the danger that’s heightening his senses.

“How long do you think until we suffocate down here,” she asks him, sounding astoundingly cool-blooded.

“Dunno.” He’s not going to come up with some half-assed guess merely to comfort her.

“Do you want to wait to find out?” Her eyes lock on his. They’re bright and glimmering, that mixture of fragility and steel he’s seen before, and it _kills_ him, but he doesn’t look away this time.

“No.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

Once decided, they make quick work of their preparations. From a first aid kit hanging on the wall, Robin produces a rescue blanket. Strike has no idea how long the thin foil material will protect them, but it’s better than nothing. There’s a small sink with a rusty tap near the stairs, and after a bit of sputtering, water begins to flow. 

“Come here!”

Scooping water into his large hands, he wets both his and Robin’s hair and splashes more over their clothes. Then, using the shears, he cuts two pieces of cloth from his shirt, wets them as well and hands one to Robin.

“Press this to your nose and mouth as soon as that door opens,” he explains urgently. “Don’t inhale the smoke!”

And then it is time.

“You ready?” He looks at Robin, standing beside him, tense and breathing quickly. At her face, creamy skin alight in the dim glow of the single bulb. The straight bridge of her nose, raspberry lips underneath. He sees the tiny blond hairs on her cheek and jaw, her tidily plucked eyebrows, the pools of blue-grey shielded by fans of ginger lashes. 

This may be the last time he’s seeing her like this, he realizes. Unhurt, alive. He should be saying something, a lot of things, _I love you_ among them, but there is no time, and he knows it’s the danger that’s making him want to say them, the extreme situation they’re in, and so he holds himself back and the moment passes.

“Yeah,” she nods. “I’m ready.”

Nodding in return, he wraps the blanket around both of them and pulls the door open.

Inferno meets them. Robin gasps into the wet cloth she’s brought up to her face. Flames lick up the walls on both sides of the corridor he can see, wallpaper flapping loose and curling in the heat. Thick smoke obscures what lies ahead, but there’s no turning back now.

“Move with me!” 

Together, they shuffle forward, past two doors, the rooms beyond blackened and on fire. There’s a stairway to their right, groaning as the rise in temperature stretches the wood. The heat on Strike’s face and against his hand holding the blanket wrapped around them is incredible. A crash from above, and Robin shrieks when plaster and burning pieces of wood rain down in front of them.

“Come on! Keep moving!” Strike has dropped his cloth to place his arm firmly around Robin. They have to stay together, under the blanket, or they won’t stand a chance. Every intake of breath stings in his lungs. 

They step around the flaming debris, and through the billowing smoke Cormoran thinks he sees the end of the hallway up ahead, and he thinks he detects a window next to a larger door. _The front entrance?_

Robin coughs beside him, and he pushes her forward. They have to hurry. He can barely breathe, and his eyes are watering. Everything is blurring. 

Something pops and snaps above them. When Strike looks up, he sees a burning roof beam swoosh down. Instinctively, he pushes Robin aside, and they fall on top of each other. All remaining air is knocked out of him when he’s struck, the beam landing across his back. It feels like being hit by a car.

“Cormoran!” Robin screams and scrabbles out from under his arm, back up on her feet. The blanket’s slid from her shoulders and from his, too. He wants to copy her movements, wants to get up, but he _bloody can’t_. The heavy beam’s pinning him to the floor, face down, and he can feel a burst of heat as his shirt catches fire.

_This is it._

But then Robin is there, pulling the rescue blanket over him, smothering the flames. Ironically, from where he’s lying, he can now see that it is, indeed, the front door he’s staring at, just a few metres away, and a stained glass window right next to it.

“Cormoran!” Robin is screaming again and coughing. Her small hands close around his left wrist and pull. “Cormoran, get up! We have to get out! Come on, help me!”

He groans and pushes. It hurts. A solid stripe of weight and pain presses down just below his shoulder blades, and he pushes harder while Robin pulls, but nothing budges. The fire roars around them. A door flings open in a gust of flames to their left. The heat. _The heat_. He can’t breathe.

“Go, Robin, go!” he chokes out. “Go, leave me! I can’t move. Go!”

“No!” 

Of course, she isn’t listening. She never does. She’s stopped pulling, staring at him, her sooty cheeks tear-streaked, wet strands of hair plastered to her face. _My God, she’s beautiful._

“I’m not leaving you here! I’m not-” A cough cuts her off, and he thinks she’s going to fall to her knees, but she remains upright. Wiping her face, she looks around, and then she steps out of his line of vision, back in direction of the cellar.

“No, what are you-” It’s his turn to cough, and with the beam on top of him his chest can’t expand, and he almost blackens out from lack of air. _What is Robin doing?!_

It’s not that he’s afraid of dying. He’s been here before, in this strange, terror-filled limbo, waiting for everything to end - the fear, the frantic beating of his heart - and it’s not easier the second time around. But he’s _devastated_ that he can’t save Robin. That she’s too stubborn, that he’s utterly unable to push her out of that front door by the sheer force of his will. 

“Robin!!!” He is the one screaming now.

“I’m here.” The tips of her shoes appear by his head - sturdy-heeled lace-up boots covered in ash - and when he turns his head, he recognizes a long metal pole in her hands that she jams between the beam and the floor. It looks like a curtain rig.

“On the count of three,” she shouts at him, shaking and determined. “One, two, THREE!”

She levers, he pushes, both of his palms stemmed into the ground. Pain bites into his back, and he hears Robin groan with effort. Something begins to budge, but he’s out of breath and out of strength and collapses again. He’s wheezing now, the acrid, sulphuric smoke everywhere - in his throat, in his eyes, in his mouth - and he’s desperately trying to somehow pull air into his lungs around the weight that’s pressing down on him.

Robin is a blur in front of him, reduced to a pair of legs and a pleading voice, a soft hand on the side of his face. 

“Come on, Cormoran, please! Come on, I can’t-... You have to try! I need you to… I _need_ you!”

It’s that line his oxygen-deprived brain latches on to. That stupid chivalric streak in him that’s pulled him towards edges and off brinks before. And now it’s pulling him towards Robin.

“One more time, Cormoran, okay? _Fuck…_ you ARE going to try ONE MORE TIME!” She’s crying and bossing him around simultaneously, and what else can he do but nod and sputter a half-choked _yes_ into the layer of ash collecting around them.

“All right then. On three again. One, two, THREE!”

Whether it’s a slightly different angle that gives Robin more leverage or the proverbial push of super-human strength provided by mortal fear - Strike feels the roof beam shift and lift, and somehow Robin manages to hold it long enough for him to get his knees under him, shove the beam aside with his torso and arm and come away free. The metal pole clatters to the ground beside him, and Robin’s hands hook themselves under his armpit, hauling.

“Get up!” she shouts, hoarse and desperate.

Strike doesn’t think he can. The fire seems to have sucked every last bit of oxygen from the room that is a black-and-orange furnace now, and his back feels like it’s scorched and cracked in half. But for Robin, he tries.

And then they’re up and moving, arms over shoulders, the blanket somehow back around them, walking through the flames. The front door appears in front of them, but it’s _fucking locked_. Of course it is, so Cormoran, in a last-ditch effort, puts his elbow through the stained-glass window next to it and doesn’t care about the glass cutting through his shirt and skin as he clears away enough shards for them to clamber through.

Robin goes first, and they don’t even have to discuss it - they both know she’s quicker and will have to help him from the other side, what with his bastard leg and busted back and all. So she does, her small shoulders somehow taking most of his weight and her hands pulling at him until they’re both outside, landing in a patch of shrubs and then crawling away from the heat and billowing smoke until they collapse on a stretch of lawn.

Strike’s ears are buzzing and his chest is heaving, his vision not working properly. He feels tears streaking down his cheeks and he tries to blink them away to look at Robin, but it’s a steady stream that he cannot stop. At least he can hear her next to him, coughing and retching, and he can tell she’s moving. _She’s okay,_ he thinks. _She’s okay._ And that is good enough for now.

Somewhere, over the pounding of his heart in his ears and the tendrils of pain licking at his back, he can hear the approach of sirens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So THAT didn’t go where it was supposed to go at all. I‘d planned on a little sexiness and mutual attraction while they were getting out of that basement. A bit of hotness. I had NOT foreseen an actual fire! But I guess that’s what happens when one puts these two together - the world goes up in flames.
> 
> All that’s left is an epilogue. That‘ll go up tomorrow.


	3. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I had to hurt a character played by Tom Burke a little. Apologies. Athos sends best wishes.

The A&E of the small country hospital they’ve been brought to is busy. Not the car-accidents- and-crimes London kind of busy, but it’s filled with the wailing of children with ear infections and gruff complaints from farmers sporting an assortment of minor work-related injuries. Thankfully, Robin and Cormoran have been sequestered to a seperate treatment room designated for the more serious cases where they are now on hold until they’ll be moved to their patient rooms.

They’ll both have to stay, Robin for one night only, to monitor her for mild smoke inhalation. Strike, whose lungs are a lot more compromised than hers and who’s dealing with contusions, a second-degree burn and several cuts on his arm deep enough to require stitches, will have to stay for an indefinite number of nights - if he doesn’t make a run for it, as the horrified look in his eyes suggested when the news was broken to him. Hospitals, Robin gathers, still freak him out, for obvious reasons, and if he were physically capable, he’d probably already be limping out, hospital gown flapping, yelling for a cab.

But for now, he’s stuck in a gurney bed, like the one opposite she’s perched on while she’s obediently sucking on an inhaler. He’s on his side to take the pressure off his injured back, brooding, an oxygen mask strapped over his nose and mouth, an IV in his hand and a pulse-ox clip on one finger. Painted salt-and-pepper by ash, his hair is sticking up in places, his pale eyes, reddened and watering, looking eerie in his soot-covered face. All in all, he’s giving the perfect impression of a deeply annoyed ghoul.

Except for a few cough-interrupted _are you okays_ and mutual _thank yous_ , they haven’t really spoken since they made it out of the inferno. There had been no time with first the fire brigade sweeping in, an ambulance letting two paramedics loose on them with strict instructions to breathe instead of trying to talk to each other and then the endless barrage of questions and medical mumbo-jumbo upon their arrival in hospital. 

And now that they’re here, alive and safe, Robin is flooded with emotions, something strange and beautiful and painful pushing up her throat as she looks at her partner, so enormous and yet so small on that gurney, and she can’t find her words.

 _I need you_ , she’d shouted over the roar of the flames and the gusts of infernal heat, when she thought she was losing him. Cormoran Strike is her partner. Without him, without the work they are doing together, the centre of her life would be gone. But it’s more than that. Here is a man who, in spite of his twelve times broken nose, his chain-smoking habit and his bouts of self-flagellating melancholy, has become the brightest ingredient of each of her days. Whose quiet appreciation, companionship, respectfulness and old-fashioned gallantry have woven themselves into her heart and, without her noticing it, have turned their friendship into something much more essential. Something that makes her heart skip a beat as his eyes, big and sad above the oxygen mask, are now wandering up her neck and face to look at her, into her.

“Robin…” he croaks and coughs.

“Yeah?” She puts the inhaler away.

Strike pulls the oxygen mask down. “Did you tell Wardle - ” he swallows “- about the tattoo?”

Robin frowns. He is referring to a distinctive military tattoo on the neck of one of Mad Hatter’s men, a clear identifying mark. “You know I did. You heard me tell him on the phone. You spelled the Latin out for me, don’t you remember?”

A puzzled frown from Strike, then a nod. “Yeah… Sorry.” He lifts his hand, the one with the IV in it. “Must be the meds. They make me a bit… loopy.” Another coughing fit hits him, and he squirms and grimaces as the movement jarrs his injured back. Quickly, Robin slides off her gurney and crosses over to Strike, reaching for his oxygen mask, and gently places it back over his nose and mouth.

“You should keep that on,” she tells him softly. “And don’t talk. We can discuss things later.”

Strike blinks, swallowing another cough. He takes a tentative breath, the oxygen flowing cool and soothing down his scratchy throat. Robin’s face hovers in front of his, striped black like war paint, her teeth glaringly white as she gives him a comforting smile. He’s so glad that she’s okay.

 _I need you_. He remembers her shouting those words, remembers them exactly in spite of the bloody meds screwing up his brain. What did she mean by them? Is he putting too much meaning into a single line, uttered to get him to move his arse out of a burning house, pushing the buttons she knew would get him into gear? Or does she indeed need him, the way _he_ needs _her_ , so much so that he would happily have let himself get burnt on a stake if it had only got her out of danger?

“Robin, we need to ta-” he attempts again, scrabbling at the oxygen mask. But Robin keeps her hand firmly on it, pressing it to his face, and cuts him off.

“Ssshhht,” she shushes him, looking stern and very beautiful in her determination. “Don’t. Talk. We’ll have all the time in the world later, when you’re better.” 

And Strike gives up. He resigns to the burning in his chest, to the lull of the pain meds flowing into his veins, to the familiar fingers he feels in his hair, plucking out a flake of ash. They _will_ have the time to talk later, _thank God_ they will. And once he’s out of here, he will pull himself together, get her a bouquet of those peach coloured roses that she likes and ask her out on a date. 

_I need you._

And then he is going to find out exactly how much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to God, I had meant to end this with a kiss or at least them saying _something_ to each other, but my stupid, mutinous brain wouldn’t go there. At least I’m ending this on the hopeful note that Cormoran will finally make a move. He'd better. *glowers*


End file.
